In 2000, shortly before he died, Alex Katrishin put aside $1.1 million with the Greater PineBelt Community Foundation in the Alex Katrishin Endowment. / Submitted photo

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American Staff Writer

Each year, the Family Y in Hattiesburg receives a disbursement from an endowment set up for it by a man who loved the Y — Alex Katrishin.

In 2000, shortly before he died, Katrishin put aside $1.1 million with the Greater PineBelt Community Foundation in the Alex Katrishin Endowment, so there would always be money for the Y.

This March, the Y received $34,000 from that endowment.

“As long as the YMCA is in existence, we will receive disbursements from the foundation on an annual basis,” said Dan Henley, the Family Y’s executive director. “We use this for our programs to provide financial assistance for individuals who can’t afford our services.

“We don’t turn away anyone for inability to pay.”

Henley knew Katrishin from 1998 until he died June 13, 2000, at age 82.

“He was in here every day,” Henley said. “He loved swimming. He has always been affiliated with the YMCA.”

As the story goes, Katrishin first became acquainted with the YMCA when he moved from Hattiesburg to California after World War II. Disabled from the war, he lived in the Y and earned a living as a street vendor, selling watches and trinkets.

Katrishin was smart with his money, Henley said.

“Anytime he had a little extra money, he would invest it,” he said. “He met his broker in the locker room at the YMCA in California.”

Eventually, Katrishin, then in his 60s, returned to Hattiesburg, where he was reunited with his college sweetheart, 30 years after they had first parted. Katrishin married Miriam Lind, and they settled down in a house at Lake Serene.

Henley remembers driving to get Katrishin to bring him to the Family Y.

“We’d go pick him up and bring him here, and he’d spend the whole day,” he said. “He would fall asleep on his back, floating in the pool.”

Meanwhile, Katrishin had amassed a small fortune. He went to Trustmark Bank, where he met trust officer, Paul Laughlin, and asked him to help him manage his financial affairs. The two became friends. Laughlin would often go over to Katrishin’s house and Katrishin would tell him stories about his life.

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“We would eat dried figs, and he would share his remembrances,” Laughlin said.

Katrishin told him how the romance with Miriam first ended.

“He was injured in World War II, and he got epilepsy,” Laughlin said. “He had periodic seizures. Times were different and he considered himself to be less than a full man, so he and Miriam dropped their romance.”

But Laughlin said Katrishin never stopped thinking about Miriam, and when he found out she was a widow, he came back to Hattiesburg to marry her.

Laughlin said when Katrishin made his financial arrangements for the endowment for the Y, he specifically said he didn’t want a building named after him.

But when officials at the Y suggested the Y be named after his wife too, he was delighted.

“They went to him and said, ‘We want to name the building after Miriam and you,’ and he fell for that,” Laughlin said. “He loved his wife.”

In 2000, the Family Y was named the Alex and Miriam Katrishin Center. Henley said since the Alex Katrishin Endowment’s inception, the Family Y has received more than $450,000.

“We look forward each year to receiving this annual disbursement,” he said. “That is what Alex Katrishin wanted. He created a true legacy.”